Cooking the Books with Gilly Smith

This week, Gilly is with new kid on the block in cookbookland, Emily Roz.

Emily is a trained chef, a recipe developer, and the content creator behind Myriad Recipes. Her “Around the World in 80 Dumplings” series went viral, gaining millions of views.

They caught up to talk about The World is Your Dumpling, which has over 80 recipes celebrating the diverse flavours and textures of dumplings from just about everywhere across the globe. Iasked her if writing about dumplings was a great excuse to travel the world through the lens of dumplings.

Check Gilly's Substack for Extra Bites of Emily.

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This week, Gilly is with another changemaker, Elliot Webb, the author of Growing Mushrooms at Home: The Complete Guide to Knowing, Growing and Loving Fungi on the awesome world beneath our feet.

The founder of Urban Farm It is a passionate grower and educator of alternative agriculture based in the UK.  His goal is become a leader in the global movement to a more sustainable and self-sufficient society by positively disrupting current food production culture. Gilly asks him to dig deep into the history and science of mushrooms to find out why so manypeople so interested in them right now.

Head over to her Substack for Extra Bites of Elliot in which he finds a brand new species of mushroom while foraging, and three fabulous recipes from Urban Farm It.

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This week, Gilly's with the man who’s on a mission to put flavour in the heart of a revolution in the food system. Franco Fubini is the CEO and founder of sustainable food distributor, Natoora. He’s also one of the judges of The Food Planet prize for innovation in food, and now, the author of In Search of the Perfect Peach.

His philosophy is simple but its impact could be massive - He believes that our everyday food choices can and should make  our diet healthier, tastier with a massive impact on the farmers, the soil and the entire food chain.

Head over to Gilly's Substack for Extra Bites of Franco.

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This week, Gilly continues to curate the changemakers with chef, author and co-founder of Leon, Allegra McEvedy

In Chefs Wanted, she’s on a mission to teach kids not just to play with their food but to cook like the pros. It’s a must-buy for any kids who want to be properly creative in the kitchen and stretch their skills.

But Allegra has a deeper purpose behind everything she does, including this book; Gilly last met her at the Conflict Café in London where she was hosting a Lebanese pop up supper club. As the tanks roll in again across Beirut, she asks her, as someone of real influence, how she feels about hope.

Head over to Gilly's Substack for Extra Bites of Allegra.

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This week, Gilly is with Tim Spector, geneticist, author of Food For Life and founder of Zoe, the personalised nutrition app that has changed the way we think about food. And now, the Food for Life Cookbook.

Since their first meeting for the delicious podcast before Covid changed the world, gut health advice is everywhere, and personalised nutrition is set to become the Next Big Thing. Gilly finds out the back story to Tim's extraordinary rise to fame and influence over the past four years, and how he thinks we can extend the trend for healthier eating to the entire population.

Head toGilly's Substack for Extra Bites of Tim and Zoe.

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 This week, Gilly is with one of the old skool TV chefs who taught Britain how to eat, Rick Stein

They last met over lunch when she was chatting to him about his book Secret France for thedelicious.podcast. This time, it’s about secret Britain, or at least the communities of Britain bursting with flavour and influencing our national diet. Rick Stein’s Food Stories, the book and the BBC show, is about all that we are in Britain and is a subject very close to Gilly's heart. She asks him, after travelling the world – Mexico, Thailand, The Mediterranean, Istanbul to name a few, to find their stories through food, what this book says about our changing nation.

Head over to Gilly's Substackfor Extra Bites from the book.

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This week, Gilly is with food royalty, the restaurant critic, writer, and son of Queen Camilla, Tom Parker Bowles. 

Royal Food has always been about impressing the most powerful people in the world, and in his book Cooking and the Crown,he tells how it has set trends for centuries, from Victoria to his stepfather, King Charles 3rd. 

Head over to Gilly's Substack for Extra Bites of Tom Parker Bowles

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Gilly is with Pam Brunton, chef/owner at Inver restaurant on Argyll and Bute, author, philosopher and star of Rick Stein’s Food Stories on BBC1.

Her book, BetweenTwo Waters: Heritage, landscape and the modern cook is a deep dive into everything that we need to know about food - the philosophy, the politics and the provenance of what we eat. It’s part memoir, part manifesto on the future of feeding the world, as well as a sharp, feminist critique of the power of the global food economy, and has been heralded as a fiercely original work of narrative non-fiction, from one of the world’s most exciting thinkers about food, sustainability and landscape.  

Head over to Gilly's Substack for Extra Bites of Pam.

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This week, Gilly is with Saturday Kitchen regular and author of nine cook books, Claire Thomson, aka Five o Clock apron. Her latest book, Veggie Family Cook Book is, like Claire, what it says on the cover – genuine, real, easy-going, with 120 recipes to make life more interesting. Gilly finds what makes her so appealing - and enduring - in the plentiful world of cookbooks.

Pop over to Gilly’s Substack for Extra Bites of Claire and a recipe for Spanakopita.

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This week, Gilly has her hands on on the brand new, much awaited book from Ottolenghi, Comfort.

Written by the 'four hungries', Yotam, his original co-writer Tara Wigley, Helen Goh and Verena Lochmuller, these are the foods that provide a comfort blanket for them, and mark a departure from the big Ottolenghi books of the past.

In a deliciously raw, often indiscreet chat with three of the 'hungries' while Yotam is out of the Zoom room, we learn what makes Ottolenghi Ottolenghi,the connected nostalgia of their favourite comfort foods and Yotam's guilty pleasure when no-one else is looking.

Pop over to Gilly's Substack for Extra Bites of the Ottolenghi crew, and a recipe from the book.

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This week, in the last of our summer holiday specials, we head to the Good Kitchen in Sicily with community chef and adventurer in all things good, Danny McCubbin.

His story is one of a leap of faith, driven by a sense of purpose coursing through his veins and cultivated by his 17 years working with Jamie Oliver, including mentoring chefs at Fifteen who had come from challenging backgrounds.

Gilly first met Danny at San Patrignano, an extraordinary rehabilitation community committed to building a better society on a beautiful farm in Northern Italy. He spoke very little Italian then, but Gilly watched in awe how he communicated through something much more primal, a massive heart, and of course, food. You can listen to that interview for the delicious podcast here.

He’s done the same, against all odds, in Mussomeli, Sicily, and his book,The Good Kitchen, Love and connection Through Food, tells that story. 

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This week’s we’re off to the Med – yup, all of it - with chef, Ben Tish.

Ben’s latest book Mediterrafollows his deep dive into bits of the Mediterranean; Moorish looked at the influence of the moors over hundreds of years on food of the Med, while his book Sicilia was a visceral guide to the street and home food of Sicily. This time, he covers the whole Mediterranean – north, south, east, west to bring us the flavours that Greece has in common with France, Lebanon with Spain, Turkey with Egypt.

Head over to Gilly's Substack for more of Ben, including a recipe from the book.

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This week, Gilly is with Meera Sodha, author of Made In India The Times’ book of the year in 2014, Fresh India, which won the 2017 Observer Food Monthly's Best New Cookbook Award, East which drew from her Guardian’s New Vegan column, and now Dinner, with a rather different story.

This is about the food that helped her recovery from burn out, scribbled in her orange notebooks which, after three years of not being able to cook at all, she would cook only for pleasure. She talked to her just after a piece she wrote about her breakdown for the Guardian prompted an outpouring of love, support and sharing and asked if she felt that she had inadvertently touched a nerve.

Head over to Gilly’s Substack for Extra Bites from Meera including original recipes from her orange notebooks side by side with the finished product in a rather beautiful meditation on process.  

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This week, we’re back at Rockwater, Hove talking LIVE with Melissa Hemsley, food writer of six best-selling cook books, including her latest, the Sunday Times bestseller, Real Healthy.

A delicious reminder of how to unprocess our diet with easy, everyday recipes, the book is an antidote to ultra processed foods. Gilly chats to Melissa about everyday activism, elevating the simplest of flavours and the recipe for joy.

Click here for Extra Bites on Gilly's Substack including a recipe from the book as well as the Q&A from the evening.

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This week, we’re going back to London, 2002, a time before pomegranate molasses, when Nigella and Jamie were first on the telly and Ottolenghi had yet to chuck his flavour bombs into the salad bowl of British cuisine, to the publication of the very first Diana Henry book, Crazy Water, Pickled Lemons.

Click here for Gilly's previous chats with Diana  about How to Eat a Peachand Roast Figs, Sugar Snow, but this time, we’re going back to a time when they were both TV producers, intoxicated by the smells and eating habits of an increasingly diverse and exotic capital.

Clickhere for Gilly's Substack and Extra BItes of Diana.

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This week, in the very first Cooking the Books LIVE at Rockwater in Hove, an audience with Guardian Feast columnist, Rachel Roddy.

Rachel is the author of three books about her life in Italy including the multi award winning Five Quarters: Recipes and Notes from a Kitchen in Romewhich was first published in 2015 and now reissued in 2024.

It’s the story of a 32 year old woman from Harpenden who turned up in Rome with little more than a travel toothbrush and a phone, planning to stay a month, maybe, before heading south and on in search of who knows what.  What she found in Testaccio, the tiny corner of Rome where she put her bag down, launched a career as a mutli award winning food writer.  In front of an audience of fans, food writers and foodies, Gilly finds out what that was.

Click herefor more from the Q&A on Gilly's Substack and here for the further reading Rachel mentions.

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This week, as the schools get ready for the long summer holidays, Gilly is with the woman everyone needs to pop in their suitcase if they’re heading to France, Carolyn Boyd, author of Amuse Bouche, How to Eat Your Way around France.

Carolyn has guided Gilly through the best food destinations – and therefore THE best destinations in France for the last couple of years though her articles in The Guardian, The Times, National Geographic Traveller Food and BBC Good Food. And that includes a recent trip to Hauts de France, a part of the country most of us scoot past en route to more exotic destinations. But Carolyn argues that food opens a door to some hidden gems - if you know where to find it.

Click here to read Gilly's adventures, inspired by Carolyn's Amuse Bouche

And stay on Substack for Extra Bites from Carolyn, including a mini guide for your summer drive through France.

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This week, we’re off to Seoul with British-Korean writer, Su Scott.

Su has lived in Britain longer than she lived in Korea where she grew up, and has raised her own daughter in London. But her latest book, Pochatells the story of the country she left behind, her family and the food they shared, often in the pochas, the covered markets and food stalls which are about so much more than food. 

Click here for Extra Bites of Su on Gilly's Substack

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This week, as the UK (and France) go to the polls, Gilly chats to Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall about the best way to support the NHS, his latest book How to Eat 30 Plants a Week.

Last time we met to talk about the River Cottage’s Good Comfort, his message was to swap out the less healthy ingredients for more, eating healthily not by taking stuff out of them, but by putting more in. This time, he’s upped his game and using the best of the latest science, he’s showing us how to eat 30 different plants a week.

Click here for Extra Bites of Hugh and here for the Food Foundation's Manifesto on how to put your own pressure on the next government to create a healthier nation.

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This week in an extra episode in the run up to the UK General Election to remind everyone why we must get the next government to fix the food system, Gilly meets Chris Van Tulleken, TV, radio and infectious diseases doctor who catapulted the term ultra processed food into the public consciousness in 2023 with his book Ultra Processed People.

Now out in paperback, Gilly asks him about power, politics and the ultra processing food industry.  

Click here for Extra Bites of Chris on Gilly's Substack, and here for more information on the various parties' takes on food policy from the Food Foundation.

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This week, we’re with Giulia Crouch to look at the diet of the Blue Zones that will make us not only live long and healthy lives, but is the Happiest Diet in the World.

A little known fact: the very first book Gilly wrote back in 1993 on the back of a Channel 4 series called Food File was The Mediterranean Health Diet: the delicious way to lose weight and live longer. The TV show and the book was about a village in Southern Italywhich scientists  had discovered best diet in the world – and the reflected the interest in what even the Government back then was telling us would save our NHS, already buckling under the weight of diet-related disease. 30 years later, many Western societies are obesogenic s with increasing numbers living in food insecurity, undernourished by an all powerful fast food industry. Gilly asks Giulia why she thinks we’re still trying to work out how to eat well.

Head over toGilly's Substack for more from Giulia's Happiest Diet in the World

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This week, we’re with Irish chef, Anna Haugh to talk about her first cookbook, Cooking with Anna.

Anna is a massive part of the story of British food culture, leaving Dublin as a young woman to cook in the steamiest kitchens in London – Shane Osborn’s Pied a Terre, Philip Howard’s The Square and Gordon Ramsay’s London House.

But in 2019, she opened her own, Myrtle in Chelsea, more than a nod – a deep bow to Myrtle Allen, the doyenne of Irish cuisine and the inspiration behind Darina Allen's legendary Ballymaloe Cookery School  

Click here for Extra Bites from Anna at Gilly's Substack

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This week, we’re talking to friend of the show, Mark Diacono about his latest book, Vegetables.

This is a book packed with ideas about how to get more from food from the land, a journey through the seasons which Ottolenghi calls 'simple, soulful, seasonal.' Bee Wilson calls it 'joyful', and Julius Roberts says it's 'an inspiring veg bible'. But for a gardener like Mark, it was Monty Don calling it 'a wonderful book, something truly inspiring and beautiful' that brought life to full circle.

Head over to Gilly's Substack for Extra Bites from Mark.

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In this special extra episode on the morning after the Guild of Food Writers Awards 2024, we leaf through some of the best food writing of the year in four of the 16 categories to explore what judges Laura Nickoll, Lyndon Gee, Kalpna Woolf and Fliss Freeborn were looking for in their shortlists.

Click here for the Awards brochure and the full set of categories and nominees.

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This week, we’ve been invited to a Chinese Banquet with the wordon Chinese food, Fuchsia Dunlop.

Her multi award winning book, Invitation to a Banquetis a huge and deep dive into Chinese life through the prism of food. After 30 years of writing about Chinese food culture, she has a seat at the table most of us can have no idea about.

Click here to head over to Gilly's Substack for Extra Bites of Fuchsia’s China.

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This week, we’re off to the jungles of Colombia and... London with Modern Medicine Woman, Frankie Paz 

Her book Plant Feastsis about how to live in the concrete jungle or the madness of modern life with the wisdom of the ancients. It’s about slowing down and finding how to live – how to really live by connecting with friends, family and nature – even if, like her, you live in a city.

Click here for Gilly's Substack to get Extra Bites of Frankie's wisdom for life.

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This week, we’re off on an Italian road trip along the coast of the Tyrrhenian Sea with Amber Guinness and her latest book Italian Coastal.

We first met Amber a couple of years ago on Cooking the Books when she told us about her book A House Party in Tuscany, the story of restoring and reclaiming her childhood home. This time, she takes us to some of the hidden gems of her family holidays from Maremma to The Aeolian Islands, cooking up food and memories along the way.

Head over to Gilly's Substack for Extra Bites of Amber.

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This week, we’re off to Menorca on a bit of an Eat Pray Love story with New York Times journalist, Yasmin Fahr.

Her latest book, Cook Simply, Live Fully is about the options in life. It’s about cooking consciously, taking time to think about what you really want to eat, and being a little kinder to yourself – and the planet. Following your nose, turning left when everyone else is turning right, and having the guts to say 'hell yes' to an adventure is what she’s all about.

Head over to Gilly's Substack for Extra Bites of Yasmin, and if you'd like to see her in conversation with Gilly in a Cooking the Books Live at Rockwater, Hove on July 2nd, click here to book.

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This week, Gilly catches up with the queen of Turkish cuisine, Ozlem Warren.

We’ve met Ozlem already on Cooking the Books to talk about her 2020 book Ozlem’s Turkish Table, but this time she’s talking about the side of Turkish cuisine that perhaps we don’t know so well, the vegetables, the sebze, inspired by thousands of years of diverse food histories.

Head over to Gilly's Substack to try out one of the recipes from Ozlem's food moments, and have a listen to her special Cooking the Books Spotfiy playlist, inspired by her DJ years at university in Scotland.

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In this extra, special episode, Gilly is with Angela Clutton, who, with Itamar Sulovitch from Honey and co and Leyla Kazim from the Food Programme, was one of the three judges of this year's Fortnum and Mason Awards.

By the time you hear this, the glitz and glamour of these Oscars of the food world will be over for another year. The mass of talent in the room will be nursing their hangovers while the winners will be stroking their crowns. And as one of the nominees recording this before the night, Cooking the Books will, whatever the outcome, be basking in the glory of the biggest food night of the year.

They discuss the nominees and the winners in the food categories: Best Food Book, Best Debut Food Book, Best Cookery Book and Best Debut Cookery Book.

Thanks for listening. Head over to Gilly's Substack for some blurry pictures of the night.

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This week, Gilly is with award winning travel writer, Caroline Eden.

Her Cold Kitchen in Edinburgh is where we find her comfort cooking up the recipes she remembers from her travels. Her memories take us on the Trans Siberian Railway, through the dark back streets of a winter in Istanbul and the political chaos of a coup in Kyrgyzstan, and remind us of what travel can do for humanity. 

 This is the recipe for food books which Gilly found so compelling when she first interviewed her about her second book, Black Seafor the delicious podcast, and which was the inspiration for Cooking the Books. It was about  all of life through the prism of food.

Head over to Gilly's Substack for a sound of Caroline's travels and a recipe from the her cold kitchen.

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This week, Gilly is with Georgina Hayden, our favourite Cypriot food writer to talk aboutGreekish, her everyday recipes with Greek roots.

This is about the mash up of all that she is – North London, 2nd generation Greek Cypriot, who with full support from her yiayia, her grandmother, has cooked up a whole story of her family life in the kitchen. Gilly finds out whether the ish in the title has to do with how she feels about spending the last 19 years writing recipes from her intercultural heritage.

Check out a recipe from Greekish on Gilly's Substack.

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This week, Gilly is off to stunning Welbeck country estate in the heart of Nottinghamshire to the School of Artisan Food to meet head baker, Kevan Roberts.

His book Baking Sourdough takes us on a sensory journey to the roots of traditional bread making, and as the School prepares for this years’ summer school courses, Gilly finds out why sour dough and artisan food matters so much.

Check out Gilly's Substack for Extra Bites from the School of Artisan Food.

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This week, Gilly is with Nicola Lamb, one of the nominees of this year’sJane Grigson Trust Award for best debut food writer.

Her bookSift is an extraordinarily accomplished first book by a pastry chef trained in London and New York by the best - Ottolenghi, Dominique Ansel and Little Bread Pedlar. Her Substack, Kitchen Projects was praised as an ‘incredible resource’ by The Observer, and her recipes have been featured in Serious Eats, The Guardian, Olive, Vogue, and ESMagazine and she hosts sell-out pastry parties with her pop-up bakery, lark!

Check out Gilly's Substack for a recipe from one of her food moments.

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This week, Gilly explores art, philosophy and food with third generation British-Chinese photographer and Instagram superstar, Michael Zee

His Symmetry Breakfast account  featured his photographs of symmetrical breakfasts every day for 10 years and has 667k followers. In his latest book Zao Fan, Breakfast of China, it's with his anthropological eye that he looks beyond the dishes to place, people and home.

Check Gilly's Substack for recipes and photography from Michael's book.

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This week we’re off to North Macedonia via Crawley with Spasia Dinkovski 

Spasia’s book, Doma, meaning home, is one of Gilly's favourite journeys, back to where it all started. She may have been born in Crawley, but her heart, she finds out through her cooking and her writing, is with the women who fed her soul in Macedonian summers.  

Already spotted as an Observer Food Monthly Rising Star, she took an Instagram lockdown hobby and made it into a supper club and shop in South London called Mystic Burek. The book is a story of a second generation immigrant ,inspired, like so many writers who come on to this show and  to Gilly's How to Cook a Book retreats, by her grandmother, her baba.

Click here for Gilly's Substack and some Extra Bites of Spasia.

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This week, Gilly takes us back to last week's Jane Grigson Trust Awards for debut food book writers to meet the winner, Chris Newens. He may still be writing his book, Moveable Feasts: Paris in Twenty Meals, but Gilly helps him unpack four food moments which open a door on Parisian food through its 20 arrondissements.

Check intoGilly's Substackto listen to chair of The Jane Grigson Trust, Don Sloan explain what the judges were looking for in this year's nominees.

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This week, Gilly Zooms over to the Clare Valley just outside Adelaide in South Australia to catch up with food writer, TV presenter, sustainable living advocate, urban farmer, entrepreneur and the queen of Granny Skills, Rebecca Sullivan to talk about her book, with partner Damian Coulthard, First Nations Food Companion.

Gilly first met Rebecca in 2016 at a conference at the University of California in Berkely about the role of food In the health of everything that we care about. Although Gilly had written a lot about Australia over the years by then, what Rebecca told her over several glasses of wine one evening about the epiphany that led to the creation of her nations company, Warndu,blew her mind.  

Pop over to Gilly's Substack to find recipes from Rebecca's food moments by clicking here.

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This week, Gilly is discussing Easy Wins with the award-winning and best-selling queen of vegetarian food, Anna Jones. Her latest book is packed with stunning recipes and ideas for getting so much more taste and less waste on our plates.

Easy Wins has 125 brand new recipes around 12 hero ingredients, all designed to make our lives easier. But with two small kids, that can’t be an easy win for her. Gilly finds out how she does it.

Do head to Extra Bites on Gilly's Substack to get a taste of some of Anna’s recipes.

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This week, Gilly is with Angela Clutton to talk about her latest book, Seasoning.

This is so much more than a bit of salt and pepper. It's about how climate is changing our seasons with its earlier springs, longer summers, warmer, wetter winters and the role we play.  It has all the hallmarks of a modern classic, a book packed with the rigour we associate with Angela’s award-winning writing but brimming with flavour and delicious ideas to reduce our waste and get more – much more – out of the here and now. 

Click here for Extra Bites on Gilly's Substack

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This week, Gilly is with Charles Clover, author of Rewilding the Sea to dive deep into the world behind our fish.

Charles is a seasoned environmental journalist, super campaigner, co-author of King Charles’ Highgrove: Portrait of an Estate.  And as co-founder of Blue Marine Foundation, he’s bringing life back to our oceans.

Margaret Atwood calls his book a 'game changer,' Isabella Tree says 'it’s desperately needed', George Monbiot says ‘what if our seas became productive again with giant sturgeon, halibut and skate – it’s closer than you think.’

Head over to Extra Bites on Gilly's Substack to hear Charles tell us another of his massive wins for the sea, this time in Dogger.

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This week, Gilly is with nutritionist, Karen Newby hot on the heels of an Instagram live with the Queen of the Menopause, Davina Mcall, on her new book The Natural Menopause Method.

It’s a book for our times. Since Davina’s documentary about HRT, everyone’s talking about menopause. Karen's book is all about food, but it’s not a recipe book. This is about arming women with the information we need to dodge the drug industry, understand how food heals and to live in harmony with one of the natural events in our lives.

Head to Extra Bites on Gilly's Substack to watch Karen make a simple minestrone soup rich in collagen – although she does drop her phone into it.

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This week, Gilly is with one of the main players in the story of modern British food, Michel Roux Junior

His Mayfair restaurant, le Gavroche is a London legend, and its closure last month  57 years after his father and uncle, the Roux Brothers changed the game in British food, is a milestone in the way we eat.  At 63, he’s ready for the next chapter, and he’s marking it with his latest book, Michel Roux at home. I asked him how he’s feeling.

Head to Gilly's Substack Extra Bites for recipes from Michel's food moments.

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This week, Gilly is with Ashia Ismail- Singer to talk food identity and how food culture travels across borders. 

Her books Ashia’s Table and Saffron Swirls and Cardamon Dust, and her 3rd, The Laden Table which comes out in April, are about her Indian food culture, born in India, brought up in Malawi and the UK and fused with the best of New Zealand.

Check for the recipes from Ashia's food moments on Extra Bites onGilly's Substack

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This week, Gilly is with the word on Omani food, Dina Macki.

Her first book, Bahari: Recipes from an Omani Kitchen and Beyond is out today, but it’s been a long time coming; the Jane Grigson Trust Award which she won in 2023 is the annual pointer to the best of the brand new food writers before their books are even finished, and the world has been longing to see what the fuss is all about. 

Born and brought up in an Omani community in Portsmouth, she tells us how learning about her own food culture has taught her about herself, and shows us around a country which has become so much more than a homeland.

Click here for Gilly's Substack to find the recipes behind the food moments.

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This week, as part of a new season for the New Year on how to live, be and do better, Gilly is with plant-based chef and author, Gemma Ogston to talk about how to get well enough to be your best self.

Gemma's journey through dis-ease led to a career in addiction counselling and nourishing DJs and 24 hour party people back to health in her temporary home in Barcelona. Her simple guide to wellness in her second book, The Healing Cookbookis about long term health, and has catapulted her to fame on Saturday Kitchen and This Morning with its immunity boosting shots and medicinal mushrooms to help us supercharge our every day lives.

Do head to Gilly's Substack for Extra Bites from Gem where you’ll find some of the recipes they discuss on the show. 

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This week, Gilly is with Lynn Cassells who with her partner Sandra Baer are two of the most inspiring women you’re likely to hear on Cooking the Books this year. 

Our Wild Farming Life is their story of following a dream, moving from South East England to the Scottish Highlands to regenerate an 150 acre farm. It was more than a dream – it was a calling to reconnect with the land, to find out what role people can play in nature, and to tell their story to people who are aching to know the answer. it started with a mind map around a kitchen table. and Gilly began by asking Lynn if she looked back at it now, would she have followed the same path. 

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This week, Gilly is with food writer and photographer, molecular biologist, multiple James Beard award-winner, Nik Sharma. His latest book Veg-Table is all over the Best of the Year lists for his original scientific take on vegetables which has opened up a whole new way of eating.

Check out Gilly's Substack for Nik's Extra Bites

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To kick off a brand new year of life through the prism of food, Gilly is with the Head of Communications and Marketing at Veganuary, Toni Vernelli to talk about the 2024 edition of the Official Veganuary Cookbook.

It's 10 years since Veganuary first made January its own, encouraging people all over the world to try out a meat free month for the sake of our own health and that of the planet. And it’s been a phenomenal success with only two countries in the world - North Korea and the Vatican City - NOT signed up for this year's month long meat free pledge. Gilly finds out the secret of its success.

Do head to Gilly's Substack for Extra Bites from the Veganuary crew. And if you want more plants in your life, do listen in next week to Nik Sharma on his latest book Veg Table.

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This week, Gilly is with Alex Jackson, Noble Rot chef, former restaurateur at Sardine and author of Frontieres.

He talks about his long love affair with France, and particularly with its food, but it’s the edges that we’re after here, The Italianness of the French Riveiera , the spices of  Provence, melting pot of Marseille. It’s about an adventure in French cooking through the prism of the others that make modern France French.

Head over to Gilly's Substack for Extra Bites of Alex's Frontieres.

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This week, Gilly's with a man after her own heart. There are very few people who write about TV chefs and their place in British food culture, butKevin Geddes, author of Keep Calm and Fanny Onand Gilly, who wrote Taste and the TV Chef(2020) are two of them.

Channel 5 is showing an hour long documentary on December 28th called the 70s Dinner Party in which Gilly joins Dr Annie Gray to talk about the social history of the TV chef. She and Kevin celebrate by diving deeply into the '70s food world through the prism of Fanny Cradock, and find much more than green mashed potato and mince meat omelette.

Head to Gilly's Substack for some Extra Bites on the Channel 5 show.

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This week, Gilly is with private chef, Jane Hodson, food writer, LucasHollweg and probably the most influential of social media food influencers, photographer Clerkenwell Boy to discuss These Delicious Things, a charity cookbook featuring recipes and childhood food memories from the likes of Nigella Lawson, Jamie Oliver and Stanley Tucci. 

The idea began when Jane and Lucas, hunkered down on a winter’s night, as Jane writes in the introduction, wondered if a collective memoir, featuring the shining lights of the British food scene could raise money for the charity Magic Breakfast. With the help of Clerkenwell Boy’s contact list and influence, it’s become the best anthology of its kind that sets a new standard in charity fund raising. 

Click on the link to Gilly's Substackfor more delicious things in Extra Bites, andhere to buy it.

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This week, Gilly is with Dina Begum, whose book, Made in Bangladesh celebrates the food and folklore and of the old country which she left when she was four years old.

It was first book, Brick Lanewhich first opened the door on what was happening in the kitchen of our East End curry houses, and propelled her into pole position as authority on British Bangladeshi culture. Gilly explores with her why she chose to take us back to Bangladesh and what she wanted to find.

Check into Gilly's Substack to watch Dina's mum make paan.

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This week, Gilly is on Hove seafront with an old friend of the podcast, Joe Woodhouse to talk about More Daily Veg.

A lot has happened since they first met on Zoom to talk about his first book, Your Daily Veg. While the Ukraine war has rocked his family life – his wife is the Ukrainian food writer and Cook for Ukraine champion, Olia Hercules, their three year old son, Wilf was diagnosed with a mild form of autism, and vegetables have actually landed properly on the British plate. Gilly catches up with him on a bench over looking the sea to ponder on the enormity of it all 

Head to Gilly's Substack to see what Joe has cooked up for us over on Extra Bites

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This week, Gilly is talking to Alexina Anatole about the least pleasant of our five tastes: bitter. Or is it?

Alexina's series of cookbooks on the five tastes: Bitter, Sweet, Salty, Sour and Umamia is a step-by-step exploration of flavour, and an impressive start to a what looks like a masisve career for this bright young spark who swapped the trading floor for Masterchef in 2020.  

In the first book, Bitter, she sets out to tame bitterness, showing us how to soothe it with dairy, balance it with sweetness and distract it with acidity. But Gilly quickly became much more interested in this super-driven polymath of a woman who has everything food TV needs right now.

Pop over to Gilly's Substack to hear more of Alexina's hidden talents.

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This week, Gilly is with Russell Norman, the award-winning restaurateur, writer and broadcaster who brought Italy to the British high street, first through Polpo, the book and chain of Venetian style restaurants which gave us small plate food culture, and now Brutto, the Florentine trattoria next to London’s Smithfield market.

Brutto, the book, is about much more than the recipes of the restaurant. It’s an ode to Florence where we find what Russell calls the 'ugly but beautiful' food that the Tuscan capital is really all about.

Don't forget to head to Gilly's Substack to see what Russell has cooked up over on Extra Bites

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This week, Gilly is talking about what home means to Irish TV chef, Donal Skehan.

Donal has moved a lot in his massive career on TV, from Eurovision to Saturday Kitchen and on to Food Network in LA. Now, with wife Sofie and their two young boys, he’s come home to Ireland. His 11th cook book, Home Kitchen, is a meditation on home, nostalgia and who he is now as a food writer.

Check Gilly's Substackfor Extra Bites from Donal

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This week, Gilly is with one of Britain’s very best food writers, the author of First Biteand The Way We Eat Now, Bee Wilson.

After years of writing about the psychology and history of food, this is Bee’s very first cook book. It’s packed with recipes for an easier life in the kitchen, as the sub title suggests, but the Secret of Cooking is not just a treasure trove of simple dishes, but how food can heal, as Bee learnt from her own experience after her husband left her in the summer of 2020.

Head to Gilly's Substackfor Extra Bites from Bee

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This week, Gilly is digging deeply into the construction of identtiy through the food with multi award-winning Russian writer Anya von Bremzen.

National Dishis a fascinating book which explores how certain foods become the cultural signifiers of France, Italy, Japan, Spain, Mexico, and Turkey. Mixing academic rigour with chats at bars and cook ups in local kitchens, she stirs up a load of our assumptions, but does she find the answer?

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This week, while Gilly is talking about the roots of Italian cuisine, Cucina Povera

Giulia Scarpaleggia began her food writing career as a blogger and photographer before becoming one of the most respected writers on Italian food. Her book Cucina Povera is all about her respect for the inguity of peasant cooking which reveals the soul of Italian food at its best.

Head to Gilly's Substack to hear why Giulia loves British food writers so much.

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This week, Gilly's with the king of Tik Tok, the idol of Insta and star of channel 5’s A Taste of the Country, Julius Roberts.

His debut cook book The Farm Table is a beautifully written story of a young man following his dream from cheffing to farming, with goats who think they’re dogs, pigs begging for a tummy tickle and an idyllic walk through the seasons. An audience of 500k on both Instagram and Tik Tok has followed his insipring journey to find himself, while he’s become one of the most compelling advocates for modern British food and regenerative farming. Give that man a Netflix show, and he will save the planet. 

Head over to Gilly's Substack for an Extra Bite of Julius.

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This week, Gilly is with one of Britain’s very best food writers, Diana Henry.

The new edition of her 2005 book Roast Figs, Sugar Snow is a lyrical walk through the autumn leaves and winter wonderlands of her favourite food places in the world as she shares the delicious finds that have made her one of Britain’s most well-respected and award-winning food writers.

It’s a book that makes you feel warmed to your bones. But Diana has been dogged by depression for years, and has faced some major life challenges recently, including cheating death. Gilly was fascinated in how she created such a work of joy, and the dichotomy of pleasure and pain.

Head over to Gilly's Substack to find Diana's personal photos from her trips for Roast Figs, and to hear an early interview for The Write Songs which Gilly did with Diana in 2017.

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This week, Gilly is at Knepp with the queen of wilding, Isabella Tree.

The Knepp estate is an extraordinary pioneering wilding project to restore nature which Isabella captured so beautifully in her 2019 book Wilding.  Chris Packham called it ‘A poignant, practical and moving story of how to fix our broken land'. Now, The Book of Wilding breaks that story down into encyclopaedic form for everyone to refer to, however big or small their garden.  

And if you’d like more from Knepp, head over to Gilly's Substackto hear her 2019 interview with Isabella at Knepp where they were joined by that majestic red stag.

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This week on Cooking the Books, Italian-Kiwi gardener and cook, Bri DiMattina tells us how she’s grown a food forest using permaculture principles in her garden in New Zealand.

Her book Nostrana, meaning ‘home grown’ is also an extraordinary story of Italian food heritage in New Zealand. It’s the legacy of her grandparents growing a new world for themselves and their fellow Italians during the economic migration in the early 1900s. But as Bri celebrates its publication in the UK - and Nigella's pick in her Cookbook Corner - she tells Gilly how her Instagram page @iatemygarden was never meant for the book shelves.

Check out Gilly's Substack for much more on Bri's permaculture principles than you'll find in the book!

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This week, Gilly is with Conor Spacey, chef, culinary director of Food Space Ireland and one of the movers and shakers behind the Chefs' Manifesto, a community of over 1000 chefs in 110 countries making real change in the world of food

His book Wasted is packed with recipes for the kitchen waste we all have in our homes, and it’s ingenius. Check Gilly's Substack for a chocolate cake recipe made from stale bread!

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This week, Gilly is with Adriana Cavita, the brilliant Mexican chef and, now author of Cocina Mexicana, whose journey from her grandmother’s street food stall to top international restaurants like Pujol and El Bulli has brought the real flavours of Mexico to London. 

Have a listen to the resilience of this woman – she’s like a hurdler, jumping the barriers of gender, language, money and envy to open her own restaurant in London. She says that this book is for all the women of her home country, for women everywhere whose struggle can lead to such massive change in the world. 

Head over to Gilly's Substack for more from her guests in Extra Bites.

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This week, Gilly is with the Indonesian chef behind her last sell out supper club, Petty Elliott. Her book, The Indonesian Table is a seminal work on the food of this archipelagic state of 17000 islands. We might think we know the flavours of Bali, Java, maybe even Sumatra, but Minangkabau? Manado? Banda Island? Probably not.

Petty brought Indonesian food to a hungry public for the first time 20 years ago as a food journalist and chef, and has been cooking for some of the most influential people in the world since. Gilly met her at the British Library to talk about her book, why she chose this most hallowed of literary venues and being a card carrying member of this very British institution.

Check Gilly's Substack for Extra Bites of Petty and her Indonesian Table

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This week, in the last of this mini series on Matrescence, Gilly is with Helen Rebanks, farmer, businesswoman, teacher, conservationist and a working mother of four.

She's also wife to Britain’s most famous farmer, James Rebanks whose phenomenal success with his books The Shepherd’s Life and English Pastoral (as featured on Cooking the Books), changed the way we look at farming. 

Now Helen tells the story of The Farmer’s Wife and looks at the values of an old fashioned way of life rooted in hard work and mothering her children on a farm in the Lake District.

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This week, Gilly is with Emiko Davies, the Australian born, half Japanese writer on Italian food who lives with her family in Florence to talk about Japan.

Her book Gohan is the story of her childhood food, fed to her by her Japanese mother in Australia and by her grandparents in Japan. It's the Japanese word for rice, but it also means ‘family meal’ and for Emiko, the only word as the title for her latest book. As she explores who she is through her food, we learn how mothers can hold the key to a child's sense of self, and how complicated - and how simple - that can be.

Click here for more information on Matrescence, and head over to Gilly's Substack to hear more from Emiko on Matrescence

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This week, in the third in a special series this summer on Matrescence, Gilly is with Tara Wigley, co-author of the award-winning Falastin, in-house writer of Team Ottolenghi, Yotam’s co-author on eight of the biggest food books, including the million-seller, Ottolenghi Simple.. and mother of teen twins and a tween.

Her hilarious and often biting ditties on Instagram have won her a new audience which is interested more in her own voice; when she asked Gilly what she thought of an early idea of a book version, she knew it would be a shoo in. How to Butter Toast is a recipe book without recipes, a rhyming route through the how-tos of cooking, but as Gilly finds out, it's also about putting form to an often chaotic life at home!

For more information on Matrescence, clickhere.

And head to Gilly's Substack for Extra Bites.

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This week, in the second in a special series on matrescence, Gilly is talking about morning telly, cook hacks and motherhood with TV chef, Shivi Ramoutar.

Shivi is the Caribbean Queen of Morning TV. She’s the chef on Oti Mabuse’s Breakfast Show, she was the TV Chef on Garraway’s Good Stuff and cooked with the Kemps on Martin and Roman’s Weekend Best. She's a  regular guest on BBC’s Saturday Kitchen, and ITV’s This Morning and has even appeared on Celebrity Mastermind. Her latest book Cook Clever is packed

with cook hacks for her massive audience.

And as a mother to 7 and 4-year-olds and a 9 month baby, she has plenty to say about matrescence. As we aim to explode the word into the national conversation to describe the process of mothering that really never stops, she tell us how's she's getting on.  It’s estimated that perinatal mental health problems alone cost the NHS and social services around £1.2 billion annually, and Shivi is only too ready to share her journey so far. 

For more information on Matrescence, click here.

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This week, Gilly's at the home of award-winning recipe writer, author and YouTuber, one of Bake Off’s most celebrated winners and mother of 2, Chetna Makan to talk about her new book, Chetna’s Indian Feasts.   

But in this first episode of a special series this summer, we’re talking about food through the prism of matrescence, the raw ingredients which make up the heady mix of motherhood and provide the recipe for life. Like adolescence, matrescence shows us a picture of process, and with it an implicit understanding of what that means. Just as adolescents are always adults in training, so matrescents are mothers in training, and that never stops.

The word was coined by anthropologist Dana Raphael in 1973 to describe the experience of half the global population but which is barely known, barely discussed, barely acknowledged. On the contrary, we’re supposed to know it all the minute we give birth.  It’s estimated that perinatal mental health problems alone cost the NHS and social services around £1.2 billion annually. Imagine the impact on families and wider society of way post natal mental health issues – the massive lows that come with the roller coaster of emotions of motherhood – at all ages and stages.

The aim of this Cooking the Books series is to introduce the word into the national conversation.  Chetna is the first of four writers, mothers, matrescents who have much to say on the subject throughout the whole of August. For more information and where to get help, click here.

Check Gilly's Substackeach week for Extra Bites from each guest.

And if you'd like support with your own matrescence, click here for information

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This week, Gilly is with Maria Bradford, author of Sweet Salone, the first book to tell the story of the food from her homeland of Sierra Leone. 

Maria came to the UK as a student and grew up with her guardian in a village in Kent, far from the colourful food culture spreading through London’s West African communities. But it was her sense of being different that has led to her becoming the word on Sierra Leonian food. Here she goes back to find the food that it took a lifetime to realise was such a big part of her sense of self.

Check Gilly'sSubstackfor Maria's Extra Bites

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This week, Gilly is with Syrian chef, restaurateur and charity pop-up king, Imad Alarnab, whose story has become a symbol of hope for so many migrants fleeing their war-torn homelands.

His book, Imad’s Syrian Kitchen is so much more than a book of recipes from Syria. It’s the story of gritty determination to make a better life for his family, of meeting angels even  when he was in the depth of despair, and the extraordinary healing that food from home can provide.  

Head over to Gilly's Substack to hear her very first podcast series Jaibli Salaam which tells the story of six Syrian families in Brighton through their food and music memories.

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This week, Gilly is with cook, gardener and beekeeper, Amy Newsome. Her book, Honey: Recipes From a Beekeeper's Kitchen takes us through the beekeeper’s year, arguing the case for less but better honey from inside the bee hive. Her holistic approach takes us from terroir to table via a garden designed for bees, while her four food moments capture the alchemy a pot of honey can achieve.

Check in to Gilly's Substack for Extra Bites of Amy and her honeybees.

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This week, Gilly is with the woman who cooked for Joe Biden, Justin Trudeau, the late Queen and the leaders of the Western world at the G7 conference in 2020. But as she opens up about what drives her, she reveals that she didn't always feel such a superwoman.

Her restaurant Emily Scott Food, perched on the beach at Newquay, has settled into the excellence of the Cornish food landscape now and as she finds more time to write, she reveals in her second book,Time and Tide, much more of her inner and outer world on the Cornish coast

Her food memories take her through her early tricky relationship with food. And as she explains her process of writing, we get a sense of how this newer career has given her a sense of calm she’s been chasing much of her life. 

Head over to Gilly's Substack for Extra Bites of Emily reading an extract from Time and Tide.

#emilyscott #emilyscottfood #timeandtide #eatingdisorderrecovery #anorexia 

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This week Gilly is with journalist and author, Clare Finney whose new book, Hungry Heartis a memoir which unravels a tricky relationship with food. 

As she explores her own story with food, she unravels the complexities of British food culture in conversation with famous friends, Diana Henry, Bee Wilson and Gurd Loyal, academics and school friends.

Head over to Gilly's Substackfor Clare's Extra Bites.

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This week, Gilly is with chef, restaurateur, journalist and award winning writer, Ravinder Bhogal.

Her latest book, Comfort and Joy: Irresistible Pleasures from a Vegetarian Kitchen celebrates the legacy of her grandfather and the life he built, ground up, for her family in Kenya

Her writing is surely some of the best in Britain today, and her poetic meditations on where we are with an increasingly plant focussed food culture combined with the stunning photography by Kristen Perers, are deeply seductive. This is a gamechanger in vegetarian cook books.

Check Gilly's Extra Bites on Substack to hear Ravinder reading one of these beautiful essays.

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This week Gilly is going fishing with Jenny Jefferies, author of For the Love of the Sea, who has made it her mission to give a voice to the hidden fisherfolk of Britain, capturing the detail of their daily work, their passion and their massively important contribution to our economy. 

Gilly and Jenny discuss sustainability, politics and why an island nation has such a problem with seafood.

Head over to Gilly's Substackto find Jenny's suggestion of how to write to your MP to fight for the future of our fishing culture.

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This week Gilly is with Jenny Chandler whose book A Good Appetite is all about eating for planet, body and soul.

It's a subject particularly close to Gilly's heart; her award-winning book Taste and the TV Chef looked at the influence TV chefs have had and could have in changing the way we eat. Her podcast for Leon How to Eat to Save the Planetand her work forCompassion in World Farming, theFood Foundation and Cooking the Books itself itself are all rooted in the interdependence between where food, health, soil and planet.

Expect then, a good old rant about where we are in the race to save the planet, our junk food culture and an unconscious sleepwalk towards doom! Happily, Jenny has a more upbeat approach!

Check Gilly's Substack for Extra Bites each week.

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This week, Gilly is with James Whetlor, former chef at River Cottageand The Eagle in Farringdon with a whole new take on the barbecue.

For festival goers, upcycling hobbyists and outdoor cooking fanatics, James has come up with genius ways to easily build your own. Before she traces the fascinating dark history of the barbecue with James, Gilly asks why a man who admits he can’t even put up a shelf decided to write The DIY BBQ CookBook.

Check out Gilly's Substack for Extra Bites every episode.

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This week, Gilly is with Niki Segnit,  the award-winning author of The Flavour Thesaurus, Lateral Cooking, and now The Flavour Thesaurus: More Flavours, 

The original Flavour Thesaurus published in 2011 has been called “a masterpiece” and is widely seen as a modern classic with its flavour pairings format inspired by Roget’s Thesaurus.  This sequel is all about plant-led pairings, giving us imaginative and ingenious ideas to make our plant forward diets so much more exciting.

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This week, Gilly is with Iranian food writer and photographer, Saghar Setareh whose debut book Pomegranates & Artichokes is the story of two food cultures that share so much in common but which are worlds apart.

Saghar was born in Tehran and moved to Rome in 2007 to study at the Fine Art Academy. But by 2009 protests against the new regime broke out in all the major cities and led to what has become known as the Green Revolution or Persian Spring, and suddenly Saghar found herself unable to go home.  

Gilly asks her about her dedication in the book to those who dare to live a life. to those who move ‘braving the seas and the mountains, the men and their borders’.

Head over to Gilly’s Substack as she takes Saghar’s orange rice cake to Claudia Roden whose legendary orange and almond cake is Saghar’s inspiration.

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This week Gilly is with former lawyer, Jennifer Medhurst, aka The Imperfect Nutritionist.

And while there's plenty of talk about gut health, this episode focusses on mental health and exhaustion after the interview took an unexpected turn.

Gilly asked Jennifer about a rather throwaway line in the introduction to her book about her own recovery from a long illness, and opened a fascinating discussion about the impact of diet on stress and mental health.

For all those suffering from chronic fatigue syndrome, long covid, or just life exhaustion, this is for you.

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This week, Gilly is back with MasterChef winner, author and doctor, Saliha Mahmood Ahmed.

She’s a historian, a TV chef and a gastroenterologist with a kitchen clinic, and she’s on a mission to prescribe food to fix our obesity crisis. Gilly first meet Saliha on the delicious. podcast when she took her through the fascinating history of food in the Mughal empire in Khazana. They met again for Foodology,  her often hilarious handbook to healthy eating, and now she’s back with The Kitchen Prescription, her no-nonsense doctor’s guide to the gut.

Check Gilly's Substack for Saliha's video on how to make her prebiotic tabbouleh in Extra Bites

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This week, Gilly is with honey sommelier and bee champion, Sarah Wyndham Lewis. 

Her book, The Wild Bee Handbookis a fascinating insight into the world of the 'other' bees, the ones that don't make honey but go almost completely unnoticed. Their role in the protection of the planet is mighty, and as the unsung guardians of biodiversity, we all need to know much more about them and what we can do to protect them against the risk of extinction.  

Click here for Sarah's bee friendly recipes on Gilly's Substack

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This week Gilly is with chef, TV presenter and now, finally author, Andi Oliver. 

She’s one of the most successful black women on British TV, a respected pundit on Caribbean cooking on Radio 4’s The Kitchen Cabinet and rocking it in the best frocks on the telly in the Great British Menu. And after her return to her ancestral home of Antigua with her daughter Miquita for the BBC,  she’s rethinking her connection with who she is. Her mix of musings and recipes from her trip though the Caribbean are captured in her first book, The Pepperpot Diaries, a stirring together of her stories and complex layers of identity. 

And as she and Gilly contemplate what it means to be 60, she tells us what it’s felt like waiting to exhale.

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This week, Gilly is with Rupy Aujla to talk gut health, flavour and his latest book, Dr Rupy Cooks

He’ s a best selling author,  a BBC presenter, a podcaster - his podcast The Doctor’s Kitchen is massive, his Instagram following is in 6 figures and somehow he manages to make it to work as a GP.  If anyone can change the narrative about why heatlhy eating is so important for the whole of society, it’s Dr Rupy.

And of course, it all starts in the gut. For two of the recipes from his four food moments, go to Gilly's Substack for some Extra Bites, and to hear Rupy on the latest episode of the Food Foundation Podcast on 5 years of the Sugar Tax, click here

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This week, Gilly is going to Pakistan, through the memories of food writer and writing coach, Sumayya Usmani 

Her memoir,Andazatells the everyday stories about life and food in Karachi. It sees the kitchen as a place where young Pakistani girls learn much more from their mothers and grandmothers than how to make a recipe, but how to feed, how to nurture and how to connect.

For Extra Bites accompanying Cooking the Books episodes, go to Gilly's Substack

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This week Gilly is with Turkish food writer and chef, Ozlem Warren 

Ozlem found fame as a blogger after moving here in 2009, and her supper clubs, meze nights and her book, Ozlem’s Turkish Table have made her the name in Turkish food.

But since her home town of Antakya  was devastated by the recent earthquake, she’s raised thousands for the relief effort with the help of food influencers like Melissa Thompson, Ravneet Gill, Ixta Belfrage and Clerkenwell Boy, as well as a Cooking the Books fundraiser supper club. Gilly catches up with her after an emotional journey back to Turkey, not least because of the death of her mother. 

To donate to the Disasters and Emergencies Commission Turkish and Syrian relief fund, clickhere

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This week, Gilly is gardening with teacher, podcaster and Telegraph columnist,Sarah Raven

Sarahhas seen massive changes in how our gardens grow over her 25 years as a gardening pundit.  For anyone interested in food and the planet, growing, even if it’s just a few herbs on the window sill, seems a no-brainer.  Her latest book A Year full of Veg gets to the heart of that relationship and how to grow your own kitchen garden.

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This week, Gilly is exploring the secret kitchens of Britain’s Desi kitchens with Britain's Best Home Cook finalist, Sarah Woods.

Her book Desi Kitchen is part of the current crop of second generation Indian cookbooks which are hitting the shelves right now. But Sarah’s tells the story of the communities in which Desi people from the Indian Sub continent have enriched so much of Britain with their food and spiritual cultures.  

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This week, Gilly time travels through the centuries with Belgian writer Regula Ysewijn to explore the rich history of the food from her homeland.

An anglophile who binged on Bronte and Austen since she was a child, Regula has spent much of her food writing life focussing on British baking. She’s a consultant for the National Trust and even wrote the Downton Abbey Christmas Cookbook. But in her book Dark Rye and Honey Cake, she’s going home to Belgium, the long way. As she digs deep into the food of the ancient Dutch language low countries, she traces the influence of their festival baking on the food culture in modern Belgium. 

And head over to Substack for some Extra Bites from CTB guests each week.

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This week, Gilly is Zooming into the 17th-century Palazzo home in Venice of Skye McAlpine. 

The daughter of Lord Alistair McAlpine, one of Margaret Thatcher’s closest advisers, Skye grew up in Venice where she now lives with her own family. A classics scholar with a PhD in ancient love poetry, she’s an expert on how Greeks and Romans understood love. And in her latest cook book, A Table Full of Love, she writes a culinary love letter to the friends and family whose recipes she’s gathered over time, whisking in memories and a dash of affection.

If the first two books were about Venice and friends and mismatched but beautiful China collected in flea markets, this is a deeper read about memories and feelings in the language of love.   Or is it?

Follow Gilly @foodgillysmith on Instagram, and on Substackeach week for a little Extra Bite from Gilly's guests.  Come to Venice with Skye in this week’s post.

If you'd like to learn how to really say something, you can join Gilly's podcasting course at Use the promo code GILLY_4-PROMO

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This week, Gilly chats to a new voice in food writing, Gurdeep Loyal. Diana Henry calls him 'amazing, original, boundary breaking, a genius with flavour’. He's a cool hunter, a podcaster and writer and his debut cookbook Mother Tongue has exploded a whole new way of thinking about Indian food.

Since he won the Jane Grigson Trust award in 2020 for his proposal for Mother Tongue, the food world has been salivating as we wait for the arrival of the final book. Anna Jones says ‘every so often a rare cookbook comes along which brings something completely new and fascinating to the world of food.’ Claudia Roden says she’s thrilled 'to be drawn into Gurdeep’s extroarindary diaspora and fantastic world of flavours.' Felicity Cloake says he’s 'a Willy Wonka wizard of flavour.'

Follow Gilly on Instagram @foodgillysmith, and you can also find a little surprise over on Substackeach week as she asks her guests for a little extra something. Gurdeep has not only created a special Cooking the Books Spotify playlist, but written beautifully on her Substack about his choices. It’s a must read and listen.  

And if you'd like to learn how to podcast and really say something, you can sign up for her Domestika course. Use the promo code GILLY_4-PROMO

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This week, Gilly has lunch with one of Britain’s most respected and original voices in British food writing, Elisabeth Luard.

A well-known writer, botanical artist and broadcaster, her many books have brought us stories of her family life in Andalucia in the 1960s set among the history, landscapes and culture of Europe. European Peasant Cookery was first published in 1986 and reprinted again at Christmas, and  is seen as one of the most important books in modern British food writing. Tom Parker Bowles in the Mail on Sunday called it 'one of the great cook books of all time.'  

The 500 recipes tell much more than how to boil a lobster or salt a cod - they remind us of a way of life that Europeans had been living for centuries. Gilly takes her back to that life in Andalucia in the ‘60s to relive some of her favourite memories, and to discuss the legacy of the book at a time when the resilience skills of the peasant have never been so important.

Check out Gilly's Substack for Elisabeth's Extra Bites

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This week, we’re celebrating three years of Cooking the Books with its very first guest, Olivia Potts and her latest book,Butter: A Celebration.

Her journey from barrister to butter, her latest book is told with what Nigella calls 'her devilish wit', both in her award-winning memoir,A Half Baked Idea and now in a book that has GONG written all over it:Butter: a Celebration.   

She’s the host of the Spectator podcast, she writes for the Spectator magazine as well as running a successful catering company with her kitchen wife, best friend and fellow food writer, Kate Young. And here she talks about the enduring allure of one of the most versatile ingredients in the larder.

Check out Gilly's Substack for extra content from Cooking the Books guests each week

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This week, Gilly is talking revolution in the bakeries of Europe with Berlin's Fine Bagels baker, Laurel Kratochvila.

Her book, New European Baking is part guide book to the coolest city bakeries in Europe, part celebration of the return to craftmanship. As she takes us from Boston to Prague, Lisbon to Warsaw and Hackney, we join her in sniffing out the best brioches, challahs and breads of every shape and hue to meet eleven bakers who are riding the New Wave of baking.

Check out Gilly's Substack each week for the podcast's Extra Bites

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This week, Gilly's talking about food and identity, folklore and First Footers with The Hebridean Baker.

Coinneach Macleod has cooked up a magical story of the Outer Hebrides, packed with ancient myths and recipes, and captivated a massive Tik Tok audience. She asks him how he did it, why people are so attracted to story and why Hebridean mothers smash their newly-wed daughters over the head with a piece of shortbread!

Check out Gilly's Substack for extra Cooking the Books content each week, including Coinneach singing her a Gaelic love song!

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